As a tire vulcanizing equipment, there has been conventionally and widely used a vulcanizing apparatus 311 as illustrated in a schematic front view of FIG. 21. Although the apparatus 311 is provided with two pairs of vulcanizing molds 312 and these vulcanizing molds 312 are actually operated in a mutually synchronized manner, the left half of the drawing illustrates a state where the associated vulcanizing mold 312 is about to accommodate therein a green tire 313 and the right half illustrates a state where a vulcanized tire 314 is being taken out of the associated vulcanizing mold 312.
In this apparatus 311, both of the vulcanizing molds 312 are arranged within a plane in postures where central axes of the tires 313, 314 become vertical, thereby allowing two tires to be simultaneously vulcanized at once.
In addition to the vulcanizing molds 312 each comprising upper and lower mold-pieces 312A, 312B, this apparatus 311 includes: mold opening/closing means 317 for opening and closing the molds 312 by displacing an upper platen 316 and the upper mold-piece 312A upward and downward relative to a lower platen 315; and carrying in/out means (not shown) for delivering the green tire 313 into the apparatus, and for taking the vulcanized tire 314 out of the apparatus, for example; so that the apparatus 311 is constitutionally adaptable to various producing situations.
Although the production ability of tires is to be determined by the number of installed sets of such apparatuses 311, there is a recent tendency that the vulcanizing time is extended such as with reduced lots of many types of tires, large-sized tires, and higher performance of tires in addition to a tendency of increased production amount of tires, thereby obliging the number of sets of apparatuses 311 to be further increased to deal with both of the above tendencies.
Under such circumstances, it is strongly desired to develop a tire vulcanizing system capable of dealing with both of the above tendencies by a reduced installation space and a lower equipment cost under the restrictions of an installation space of apparatuses and of an equipment cost, as compared with a situation where many sets of the above-mentioned apparatuses 311 are simply arranged within a plane.
In view of the above, JP-A-9-48026 has proposed a tire vulcanizing apparatus in which vulcanizers are constituted by arranging a plurality of molds in postures where central axes of tires are horizontally oriented, and one mold opening/closing apparatus is provided correspondingly to four molds, thereby contemplating a reduced installation space and a reduced equipment cost. However, this proposal is also to move the mold opening/closing apparatus to a position corresponding to each vulcanizer so as to take a mold into and out of the corresponding vulcanizer at each position and to eject a vulcanized tire from the mold and set a green tire into the mold, in a manner to require a space for moving the mold opening/closing apparatus itself and a moving apparatus therefor as well as a space and an apparatus for temporarily placing vulcanized tires and green tires at respective moved positions, thereby failing to sufficiently lower the installation cost.
Moreover, since the moving times of the mold opening/closing apparatuses between the respective vulcanizers are different depending on the positions of the vulcanizers in the above proposed tire vulcanizing apparatus, it is required to determine a vulcanizing cycle on the basis of a period of time during which the mold opening/closing apparatus moves between the most separated two vulcanizers, thereby resulting in an extended cycle time and a deteriorated throughput per unit time.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a tire vulcanizing system capable of remarkably increasing a productivity while sufficiently and exemplarily dealing with various vulcanizing conditions, even with a reduced installation space and an effectively restricted equipment cost.